Big Problem š„
(midwest.social)
Comic StripsWhen you're young you experience the world, when you get older you keep the world working for the young to experience it, and when you're old you wish you'd made it work better so you could've really experienced it.
I love this art style so much.
funny thing is, this was true 40 years ago, and it's true today.
Laughs in veganism (and thus taking personal responsibility for changing, non-hypocrisy and non-virtue signalling and non-deflecting)
Yes.
Well, they are definitely making death more appealing every day. So there is that.
We have a circus we gotta run out of town first
The problem is Capitalism.
It's part of it, but not only that
They said that to me when I was a kid... and I was born in the 80s.
They said that to me when I was a kid and I was born in the 60s.
And now they're in retirement.
Fuck them. They should have been in prison thirty years ago.
What?
Those ones were right. We are solving it now, and we either finish solving it or our children will have to deal with resource depletion when their time to shine comes.
Either way, it's not Global Warming that they will be solving.
Do you think if we had lifespan in the centuries we'd have a different perspective?
Not under capitalism. The wealthiest will do just fine in climate collapse and they're planning for it. They don't care about anything beyond the next fiscal quarter in terms of environment.
I believe it's more a cultural thing. In a lot of places, people think in terms of a community, not individuals, and will plan things for the longer terms. But in american culture, people are much more selfish and short-sighted. Problem is that they have been shoving their culture in the entire world, and it makes it look like this is the default for all of humanity.
The 2001 game Arcanum (a steam punk fanatsy hybrid) had that perspective. You had a world based in late Victorian industrialization and you had elves and dwarves and stuff... but those same dwarves and elves had VERY different views on technology. This is because they live for centuries while humans just decades. They make it clear that the two longer living races often approach technology (elves hate it btw, dwarves like it but are cautious) with caution specifically because they can see the effects of their shit from a hundred years from now while humans simply cannot.
Stupid generations war. As stupid as men vs women, religion vs religion etc. It should be smart people vs stupid greedy sociopaths
And simply blaming older people also hides the problem of global inequality and exploitation of the third world. Most elderly in my country only faced food insecurity and hyperinflation when younger, and their environmental impact for all the time they're alive is smaller than the environmental impact of a current teenager in the usa.
Class war is the only war that will get us out of this.
It won't either. Class cold wars can get you some results, but hot wars are always damaging to everybody.
I was thinking like this when I decided to go into the field, like "we can't just doom the next generation and peace out", now i'm deep in it at the highest level and i'm like "ooh that's why.."
I remember a similar comment made by one my highschool teachers. Because I was such a try-hard cringe edge lord I said something like "if my generation got rid of your generation, then we've solved that problem".
Amazing that you had enough knowledge to answer like that in the first place. Looking back on my school days, I was so uninformed about so many important things: climate, politics - you name it.
I want to hear what he thinks his generation's problem to solve was.
Protesting a lot at age 20, then becoming a square.
Too much extra money and not enough beach houses to spend it all!
High gasoline prices.
99% probability: Cold war/communism
This comic is TERRORISM according to Trump's Republican Party!
"WE ARE ALL DOMESTIC TERRORISTS" -CPAC 2022
This comment is anticapitalist and therefore terrorist...
Lemmy is anticapitalist and therefore blocked by the Great American Firewall.
Dissidents will be reported.
Hopefully Trump will die of a stroke before before his third term
Boomer: "Climate change will be your burden to suffer through".
Gen Z: "It's not fair. You got a full life of profligacy before the effects were even noticeable. I get none of the material wealth and I'm going to have to live my whole long life suffering increasing effects of it."
Boomer: "Not so long."
Also boomers: "When are you having kids? I want grandchildren."
Told my mom I didn't want kids and she said, "Oh you'll change your mind"
I came out to my mom as gay and she said "well you can always adopt"
Then I started intense birth control treatments for my fucked up reproductive system and she was like, "you can still adopt"
Yeeted my uterus, cervix, and fallopian tubes just before my bday this summer and threw a fuckin party afterwards because now there is absolutely no way I can ever be a parent AND my reproductive system can't do whatever the fuck it wants cause it doesn't exist!
My mom finally accepted that this part of the family tree has ended after that. This while process happened over 18 years. I started telling her I didn't wanna be a parent when I was TEN.
Edit: I should prolly say that my mom isn't a boomer, but Gen X. She's surrounded constantly by boomers and other members of Gen X who act like boomers so she has picked up a lot of the traits. Practically demanding grandchildren was the worst boomer thing she's done so far, and I hope it stays that way.
Meanwhile. Most Boomers post adoption
They're not my real grandchildren.
How my grandmother was when my sister was adopted. Never treated her the same as the rest of the grandkids. Even when my sister helped care for the bitch 24/7 while she was living in our home dying of self-inflicted lung cancer.
I was not sad when my grandmother died, if you can tell.
āwell you can always adoptā
As if adoption wasn't an extremely intensive process that goes on for who knows how many years and even then it's not guaranteed you'll actually get the kid. Let alone how much it differs from DIY.
Thank you for your service.
What action in my timeline are you referring to as my service lol
Lol. Not having kids is one of the most ethical choices we can make.
Ah. See, I don't want children because I'm what you call a selfish person and want to live my life completely unbound. Kids would just kill my dreams and the vibe.
The ethical part is just a bonus to make me feel even better about my decision.
This guy's an anti-natalist, I wouldn't take seriously anything he fucking says.
Fuck off. Anti-natalism is eugenics and anyone who advocates for it is a Nazi in my eyes. Not to mention 90% of you all just project your major depression and misery into literal 8 year olds. Please just go to therapy.
Every conversation people have about "degrowth" and "the earth has too many people" always leads to someone advocating for eugenics OR LITERAL GENOCIDE. The Earth, right at this moment, can hold ten billion people. The problem is capitalism, consumerism and food waste.
Everything you don't like or understand is Nazi?
Degrowth. It's not antinatalism, nor eugenics. But simple people need simple answers. It's ethically shrinking humanity's population and consumption to within what the earth can sustain. That's it.
You know what hole to shove your Nazi bullshit up.
Selfishness incarnate lol
I once saw it described as the Boomers being the āfuck aroundā generation and Gen Z being the āfind outā generation.
Oh no, they're not just going to let it happen. They'll actively stop us from solving it.
Well im not having solar panels near my town. They'll absorb all the sunlight and it'll be dark!
Windmills slow the planet down!!!
But wouldn't it be nice if there was more time in a day?
"Sorry kid, I need my 9% returns on these investment funds, and I don't care where that money comes from."
I bought this stock from a company called planter or something, it's going crazy lately
I donāt care where that money comes from.
Unless it's renewable energy tech, then fuck it, those shitheads can rot in hell!
But the windmills will kill all the birds (that there are none left of)!
Not real ones, anyway
And they'll put more of us on the planet too, because it's so wonderful here.
Solving? There's an undeniable solution that has been there as long as the problem has
I'm in favor of completely remove the humans. We should have the tech already.
Which is...?
There's a pretty public list of who owns the most resources
Stop burning fossil fuels.
That would help, but definitely not stop climate change.
Sure, taking your foot off the accelerator doesn't technically stop the car.
Either you ration things that warm the planet, or you find a way to cool it directly? Neither of these options can be done at a large enough scale.
Humans have never been good at constraining cultures that gorge on a limited buffet of resources.
Implementing climate control will be costly and is still controversial, especially proposed solutions that require polluting the stratosphere with chemicals.
I'm still optimistic about geoengineering research.
Of course, nobody will want to foot that bill until they're staring the threat in the eyes.
Looking at this more benevolently, the teacher might be wishing that this kid's generation will end up being more conscious and willing to act than his own.
Yah I don't think there's anything wrong with the message in the context it's presented. It's a fucking teacher. They are already doing not just the most they can, but also doing something far more effective than butting heads with a corporate-driven world at a time when environmentalism was seen as fringe and ludicrous by most people on Earth.
It would be different if it was some wealthy corporate CEO saying "I'm leaving this for the next generation to solve."
I remember a time that even a teacher saying this to a student would be considered inappropriate activism about a controversial topic.
I remember a time that even a teacher saying this to a student would be considered inappropriate activism about a controversial topic.
...Like right now?
From my perspective (millenial) raised in a conservative area, climate change discussion went from 'kinda iffy in the past' to approved to expected, then suddenly lurched to more taboo than I've ever seen.
I can't even discuss it with my college-educated older relatives without them ranting about it. It's a total taboo; they think I'm nuts for even bringing it up as an existential problem.
I can only imagine what parents would say if teachers said that now.
Yep. And your generation will do the same, and it will go on like this until it can't be ignored anymore, because that's what humans do, whatever the age.
until it canāt be ignored anymore
At which point the fascist governments people have voted into power will keep on going as they were while murdering some convenient scapegoats, until mass scale industrialised human society collapses, never to recover because we used up all our resources.
Edit: I honestly think people don't quite understand that once all this bullshit collapses, there will probably never be another high tech civilisation on Earth again: all the easily extractable resources will have been used up, and the amount of energy required to extract more would be higher than what will be available once oil-based hydrocarbons have been more or less used up. Magic batteries that require a ton of resources won't fix the situation, and we have no large scale replacement for oil.
The large scale replacement for oil is the original source of that energy, the sun. Sure it will take a while, but high technology (read small computers) doesn't actually require hydrocarbons, it just requires knowledge of physics. Modern society is based on hydrocarbon fuels because they're so convenient, but that doesn't mean it's required for any of our technology to function. We will likely be combusting hydrocarbons for the rest of our existence, they're just too convenient for energy storage, but the source of those hydrocarbons could easily be specialized cyanobacteria farms or direct chemical synthesis. Both of those technologies already exist, but we have never done any significant investment in them because they would have to compete with basically picking up what's already lying around. In the absence of significant oil deposits we will be forced to make those technologies work.
Hence my hate for them. Fucking dicks the lot of them.
Keep kicking it down the street.
Uh oooohhhhh! Fascism!
A teacher showed us the documentary An Inconvenient Truth and the real truth I learned from that, is that the majority of adults are irresponsible crybabies.
Everyone is just faking it. And those that don't, don't have the attention of those that listen.
Our safety manuals are written one disaster at a time, never before.
Its because most people only care about their comfort and convenience right now and in the very near future.
...and oligarchy, and fascism, and income inequality, and decreasing life expectancy, and increasing infant mortality, and more wars, and huge amounts of debt, and job loss, and...
Short version: unchecked capitalism.
But I was told that capitalism checks itself using something called āmarket forcesā.
Turns out "market forces" was just the heavy metal poisoning talking, they were just hallucinating magical economics.
Lead in gasoline and household products really fucked with some generations, hard.
Hey now, those āmarket forcesā are actually the work of the wonderful āInvisible Handā! Which is of course the work of God and is definitely not being manipulated by all those billionaires behind the curtain over thereā¦
Imagine a war against an enemy with known lead poisoning.
That would probably be an easy win
They poisoned themselves with shit from pet stores and farm supplies. They sent death threats to the guy who told them not to inject bleach.
Individually, they may be easy to beat, but as a group they are worse than a zombie apocalypse
Yeah. Those problems totally didn't exist before capitalism.
Not all at once, no. Fascism didn't even exist until the 1920s.
Fascism is a modern iteration of an old problem. Not even the worst version of it. Plenty of theocracies and empires in history promoted similar strong group/national identity paired with subjugation of individuals to an authoritarian state.
And fascism is not even compatible with capitalism as it requires state control over industry. It would be more compatible with socialism except that it's not nationalizing industry for the benefit of the working class explicitly, just the benefit of the nation/state.
Capitalism is also a modern interpretation of an old problem. The idea of material wealth determining worth and power. That's largely how "might makes right" works with a more economic flavor.
If you think you can't have state control in capitalism you haven't been paying attention. China is capitalist country with tons of government controls. They can throw a "communist" label on it, but that have little to no actual communist/socialist ideology.
When the state fully controls your property, it's not private property and thus not capitalistism. It's not socialism either, because they still give deference to the original "private" owner.
China is a perfect example of how a fascist country would operate, honestly. It's frankly annoying that people don't routinely call it a fascist state and instead call it communist.
Besides that it's smooth sailing.
... and microplastics, and resource scarcity, and MRSA, and infrastructure collapse, and social media addiction, and ...
"We didn't start the fire..." But you guys threw a bunch of petroleum and coal and tar sands on it
Change resource scarcity to resource hoarding and we have a deal
We're so close to flying cars
The decreasing life expectancy is largely related to obesity though. There are a lot of obese people who find reasons to blame other than their own self determination. If corporations have made it easy to eat yourself to death, people shouldn't just let them get away with it by eating themselves to an early death.
Iām glad you brought up personal responsibility, however if youāre buying something from the grocery store, unless itās raw ingredients, it has shit in it. Even then, in the US the only way to completely avoid nasty shit in food is to produce it yourself or purchase from a local farmers market. Unfortunately many people donāt have the resources to do that. But to your credit, we do seem to be developing some sort of allergy to personal responsibility, especially in regards to personal health and fitness.
If people willingly choose to shorten their life, I don't consider it a problem.
Now, lying and manipulating people into choosing it, similar to what the cigarette industry did, is obviously a problem.
But at this point, everyone knows cigarettes and processed foods are unhealthy. People just don't care.
People dont have the energy to care. They're spending all of it trying to keep their families fed, clothed, and under a roof.
I'm so fucking tired of people pushing personal responsibility for systematic problems. People are kept intentionally under educated and do not have the resources to learn. No not everyone "knows" ultra processed foods are bad. Most people can't even properly defined ultra processed foods and default to calling them processed foods which covers basically everything you find in a store besides produce.
Yes.
... next question?
narrator: yes, yes they did.
The problem is, there are egotistical maniacs with nukes trying to enslave society for the benefit of the 1% or to satisfy their own ideals while sacrificing everybody else's needs/safety. If they decide to nuke everything, there won't be a world left to protect against even this.
It's a global issue and America may be taking steps back, but the rest of the world is taking steps forward at least.
Even America is taking some steps forward in some odd ways.
Trump: āAlaskan refuge drilling is wide open! Drill, baby drill! Who wants first bid?ā
Shell: āEw, no. Literally no one wants that bad PR.ā
The videos assessment is fatally flawed and meaningless. (Admittedly, I watched the first half then skipped through the rest quickly)
It talks about the amazing growth of renewables and other unrelated things like Ozone. Climate change has nothing to do with renewables. Climate change is based almost entirely on emissions of GHGs. Building gigawatts of renewables means nothing unless you displace fossil fuels with it. Spoiler alert: we didn't.
COĀ² emissions are higher now than ever. All the renewables were only added to our energy mix. No fossil fuel was displaced. In fact, today we burn more fossil fuel than ever before.
The keeling curve is steeper now than it was in the 60's showing that unfortunate exponential growth rate curve.
We are emitting more COĀ² now at a faster rate than ever before.
Renewables are are only good if whatever comes online replaces fossil fuels. It didn't. 2024 we are now at 1.5Ā°C above, and if we magically turned off all emissions today we still have 20 years of baked in warming. All we did was find new ways to grow and consume. AI datacentres are the new gobbler of energy.
As a rule of thumb, agriculture output is anticipated to drop 10% for every degree of warming. Our propposed plan, which is no where near realistic or on track is 3.5Ā°C. 35% less food doesn't bode well.
Then the real fun part kicks in. If we ever manage to stop human emissions from fossil fuel use, entirely, we will still have to contend with natural warming from a planet that is not in a stable state. Tipping points are natural phenomena that behave one way at first until you tip it over then it falls into a new state. The interesting ones are arctic ice cover where sunlight that used to be reflected off polar ice caps now gets absorbed by dark oceans. Then you get the frozen methane hydrates under the arctic that melt and have the potential to release even more methane with no way to shut it off.
If you're not a doomer, you don't understand. Shits bad man. Real bad. No one should be feeling good about our accomplishments to date. You shouldn't feel hopeful. You should be panicking into radical action.
We are emitting more COĀ² now at a faster rate than ever before.
We are not, and that graph you posted does not measure that.
COĀ² emissions are higher now than ever.
And they are not either. That phrase has been true for almost every year of the last 3 centuries, but not this one.
Again, your graph does not measure the thing that you said. I'd guess that you are misinterpreting the data.
"Total energy-related CO2 emissions increased by 0.8% in 2024, hitting an all-time high of 37.8 Gt CO21. This rise contributed to record atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 422.5 ppm in 2024... "
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2025/co2-emissions
Go akshually somewhere else.
You are again reading it wrong.
Humanity doesn't do shit unless the problem is holding the door open with a foot stuck between the door. Then the rest of humanity who the problem hasn't gotten to yet will point and laugh at the person experiencing the problem because reasons. At that point nobody will be too eager to jump and help, lest their door get stuck too by the problem.
How did 14 people understand this
Proper punctuation marks at the end of the comment.
What's a middle school teacher supposed to do about it? There's little to nothing we can do at the personal level beyond reducing our personal tiny footprint.
Whatās a middle school teacher supposed to do about it?
Join an organisation that does something about it and teach all children about that organisation.
So climate change will be their generation's problem, just like in the comic? I feel like most of the replies to me are just proving the teacher right.
Huh? Joining an organisation is not leaving it to the next generation, it's taking action yourself
Almost. The next generation is the backup plan. Joining an organisation, and inviting the parents, can solve the problem earlier.
Teach kids about it, like the artist's did
Isn't the concept of the comic that it isn't enough?
I think the point of the comic is that it is really depressing to hear this as a kid, in ways the teacher doesn't understand.
I was an environmental educator for a while and part time activist in college but I gave up.
It really seems like an intractable problem. But I recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future novel for a speculative fiction / near future grappling with how society might respond to a warming world.
Spoiler: it starts with a heat-wave natural disaster which radicalizes India into a rogue state, which then does geoengineering on its own, but this isn't enough by itself.
Just based on that summary, I immediately thought of the book Termination Shock, which has a similar premise of an actor beginning to geoengineer with global reprecussions - though it's heavier on the politics of the situation than any actionable info. If you haven't read it, I'd recommend. I'm definitely going to pick up Ministry For The Future.
I guess he should be overthrowing the oligarchy and writing a new constitution with environmental protection as one of the main focuses.
But he's a drawing, so he can't. Will you?
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. No, that's not within my capabilities
That's exactly the point
assuming youāre American your tiny footprint is one of the biggest in the world
as to what you can do about it, tons!
but youāll just have to do some research (on ecosia.org i assume š) to find out more about what you can do
I'm Asian. Don't take my just-rising living standards away from me.
Also, we can reduce our footprint, but it's small compared to corporate bullshit. We could ALL reduce our footprint and it wouldn't be enough to make the environment not-the-next-generations problem.
Just because its small doesn't mean it doesn't have an impact. I want to be able to tell the next generations I tried in ways thst made my life less convenient.
On my street alone (in thr US), half the houses have massive lighting setups and inflatables for Halloween and they're about to switch them over for Christmas. Three months of absolutely unecessary electric usage. Sure one can argue that if they shut them off it wouldn't have a world changing impact but it's hard not to look at that and go wtf?
Things you can do yourself. Select those that are right for you:
- Most trips are <3 miles. Use a bike or e-bike where it makes sense, or public transportation if itās built out.
- Take steps to avoid the consumer-for-the sake-of-consuming mindset. Get things secondhand or from buy nothing groups.
- Eat less meat. Vegetarian dishes can be flavorful. Even a grilled cheese and some soup is delicious. Miso also has that essential umami kick. As a reformed āneed meat with every mealā type person, itās doable, you just have to rewire your mind and gut. Itās a thing you can do to both save you and your environment.
- Donate to climate advocacy groups and call your political representatives.
- Recycle - itās oddly getting a bad rap these days, because weāre the downstream consumer to the folks designing and making crap, but we still also have responsibility in the chain.
- Avoid things like fast fashion - buy things with sustainability built in and leave intense shipping logistics out.
- compost and grow your own food if you have the space and time. Less transport and typically better for you. At the very least, youāll know what youāre eating.
- purchase personal carbon offsets from reputable organizations
- consider investing in a heat pump and insulated glass windows when itās time to switch the older ones out if you have a home.
- Avoid buying items that are simply packaged water. Try to buy concentrated items and then add water at the point of use. Soaps, detergents, bottled water, flavored drinks are easy ones.
- Use a smart thermostat and set it between recommended standards for your region. You can always wear slippers / more layers to warm up when slightly cold, or run fans, hydrate and wear light clothes when a little warm.
- Procure preventive maintenance on big ticket items and use your built in paid warranties. So many pieces of equipment fail due to some minor thing that could have been addressed earlier.
- encourage others, evangelize sustainability. Political movements need to meet certain thresholds to turn into action.
Iām Asian. Donāt take my just-rising living standards away from me.
edit: how did I forget: every time I hear someone say they can't do anything why bother, I want to say you sound exactly like the boomer in the cartoon, it's funny how so many people blame boomers for doing nothing but then simultaneously argue that it's not worth doing anything
You have an opportunity unlike the rest of us to have rising living standards in addition to not contributing to the problem
Solar + Battery + EV's will save you billions of petro-dollars not going to the likes of Russia/Saudi Arabia/Iran etc
I can already see that this is not reality:
we can reduce our footprint, but itās small compared to corporate bullshit
Recently announced in Vietnam:
Hanoi plans to ban fossil-fuel motorcycles from its city center in July 2026, part of a national drive to cut emissions and air pollution. Its commercial capital, Ho Chi Minh City, is weighing a similar step. By 2030, Vietnam aims for a third of cars and more than a fifth of motorbikes to run on electricity.
Vietnamās motorbike market, at about 3.5 million units a year
https://apnews.com/article/vietnam-evs-motorbikes-yamaha-vinfast-4ab76826787a806392655b843c374f3a
That's 3.5 million small footprints that will soon be making a positive impact :)
This is not a zero sum game, every single little bit helps
I'm Asian. Don't take my just-rising living standards away from me.
Nothing is being taken away. You and your countries have the biggest chance at actually making things better! Rising living standards doesn't mean "copy the West and all its mistakes". Don't look at the West as if they have it all figured out.
You could have walkable, green cities and towns, with amazing public transport! It costs less than forcing everybody to have a car, keeps more people healthy as there will be less pollution of all kinds (noise, particles, chemical, industrial, ...), and makes for much happier citizens.
You could invest in green technologies like solar, wind, hydrogen, heat exchangers, etc. It will mean cheaper bills for everything (transport, heating, cooling, appliances, ...) and much less dependence on foreign companies (once things are set up). No more oil and gas imports would be amazing for your country's autonomy.
Going green doesn't mean worse living standards, it means exactly the opposite. You could leapfrog the West and raise the living standards for millions of your countrymen and countrywomen.
Kenya is an excellent example of this. 90% of its electricity is from renewable sources and its aiming for 100% by 2030.
Awesome! That sounds amazing. Does that mean less diesel and gasoline cars (or less cars in general)?
I'm not against any of that. But all that requires buy in and commitment from govt, and we're no less corrupt than anybody else.
Yeah, that's definitely a big problem in the west too. It just seemed like you were connecting high living standards to a polluting lifestyle. I hope Asia, Africa, and South America can just skip all the polluting bullshit and go straight to green. Good luck! I saw Thailand wants to have a high speed rail from its capital to the most northern city, which is great! At least that's happening.
There's no reason to assume that his students will end up in positions that are significantly more powerful than his. And he is talking about generations, not you people in my class.
The political process and how to change it in a meaningful and lasting way without risking tyranny is almost always the problem.
The political process and how to change it in a meaningful and lasting way without risking ~~tyranny~~ profits of the capital class is almost always the problem.
Ftfy.
Yes... But only because we have bills to pay... Also, fuck you
1988
https://lemmy.world/post/35800957
Sadly if even a wasteland has value if someone says it does. Humans are so volatile they will fight each other even if aliens are invading.
āNow listen here, you little shitā¦ā
Ironically, the 'ozone hole' crisis is a perfect template for how climate change should've been handled.
-
Scientists identified an existential problem.
-
World leaders got together and agreed on a solution (banning CFCs).
-
It was inconvenient (screwing up refrigeration and other industry at the time), but the public nodded and went along.
-
Problem solved.
As it should be, with everyone staying in their lanes. Lifelong specialists analyzing the problem, leaders acting on what experts say, the general public humbly recognizing their civic duty and deference to experts.
...Then those roles broke.
Apparently, boomers and others concluded "well that was awful. Why did we do that? Let's not listen to scientists anymore, question them, and complain very loudly the next time this happens," as if they're the experts now. Leaders took advantage, and I suppose scientists turned to public activism which only fed the trolls inflaming it.
Not to discount the effect of Big Oil lobbying/propaganda. I suspect that wasn't such a thing back in 'ozone hole' times.
You are missing the step where the experts weighted in and created an alternative capable of maintaining the same societal benefits with minimum losses. It's between steps 1 and 2.
That's a good point TBH.
To add up, we are close to that now with solar and batteries. But we are still not there.
And you can see the revolution going up all over the world. The US is resisting it a bit, but even there solar is gaining space.
Acid rain is another great example.
You're....you're kidding, right?
Because we all know the ozone hole is what is causing global warming right?
Yes, lets blame GenXers, who despite being in their late 40s and 50s, have almost ZERO power because the boomers wont fucking retire already. We've been fighting with boomers over climate change (and everything else) since it was called "global warming" back in the 90s. Don't put this shit on us when the majority of us don't want this.
I mean, in us terms, genxers broke the most heavily for trump. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/20/cherie-westrich-alt-rock-gen-x-maga-00033769
Sorry, I guess that was a bit unearned. I slipped it in there because I was trying to work out the age of the teacher and he seemed too young to be a boomer, plus Space Jam is too young for boomers.
Eh I tried to make a funny, failed
Humanity's carbon footprint has been a distraction. All that money and effort (green energy legislation, carbon caps, etc) could've been funneled into geoengineering for proper long-term solutions.
Even if humans were eradicated, the habitability of Earth would only be prolonged a bit. So the idea that we just need to emit less carbon is just kicking the can.
I'm no subject matter expert, but I imagine, if there was scientific consensus as to what's a sensible geoengineering change to make, then we would be on that immediately. Oil companies could invest a fortune into that and it would still be beneficial for them.
You're right, and there is no consensus. Companies, and even current governments, are ill-equipped for solving long-term problems. Especially a problem that won't be a net harm for like 60 years.
My point was that all that money could've gone to a real long-term solution which requires a lot of research (and which humanity will need to finance eventually anyways). Reminds me of people who spend more money on car repairs than what the car is worth. They see a mechanic bill of $400 and think it's cheaper than buying another vehicle. It gets it running for another 4 months. Then a dozen bills later...
"Another 4 months" for current climate change policies is like "another 50 years"... being generous.
Reducing carbon emissions is a temporary solution, buying a couple thousand more years. Taken to its most extreme, it requires human industry to ultimately cease and thus make it even more difficult to solve the problem permanently.
Personally, I don't think that more research will particularly change our outlook on that. Anything "geo-" is incredibly political.
Even if we find a solution that genuinely just reverses the effects of climate change, there's gonna be some regions that see short-term disadvantages from that. Or even regions that merely imagine some catastrophic weather events were caused by making the planet cooler, even if they would've been hit by worse on a warmer planet.
Those regions may go against all reason to stop the geoengineering from happening.
It also has to be said that the CO2 in the atmosphere isn't just pumping up the temperature, it's also causing ocean acidification. Corals get dissolved by the sea water getting less alkaline. And corals are the basis for a whole lot of life on Earth.
Which is again one of those points, where I just don't see research finding much better of a solution than algae and trees. You can hardly beat or improve the efficiency of just letting nature happen.
I guess, we could start pouring lye into the ocean instead, but we'd need quite a lot of it. So, I'm also not particularly convinced that it's more cost-effective than letting nature happen, even leaving aside the problems we could cause with lye build-ups.
Where did you hear that nonsense?
It's common knowledge that humans are accelerating climate change, they're not the sole source of it. š¤·
Cynical take from today's fucked up point of view: The teacher was woke and entirely wrong. The proof is that climate change is still not happening today. Caring for the environment is economic terrorism. There never was anything to worry about in the first place. Drill baby drill.
But climate change IS happening, and already observable.
You don't say. It's almost as if I was deliberately obtuse.
We are getting close to a nuclear war. Don't we want global warming to compensate for the following nuclear winter?
* the numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter
Finally, an optimistic view of the situation.
